SMART Finance is a fully featured, sophisticated financial accounting tool to meet your highest expectations well into the 21st century. Its features include modules for General Ledger, Budgeting, Requisitions and Purchasing, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Inventory, Project Accounting, Administration, and more. It also has fund accounting procedures, encumbrance, and unique Minnesota State reporting features. This system will meet all Minnesota state requirements for UFARS.

SMART Finance is an integrated solution that supports interfaces to other school district systems. This system makes it easy for everyone in the school district to have access to the information required for making good financial decisions. We are confident you will agree that providing a way for your staff to move financial data from one desk to another electronically can save time. Your staff will love the features that reduce data entry time, allowing information to be entered only once while also making it available to all authorized users.

In addition to the contemporary functionality of SMART Finance, Region I provides an unparalleled level of support services to school district administrators and staff. The following is a summary listing of support services –

General Training and Support

Individual and group training is provided, as requested, for beginning through advanced users.

Unlimited Region I telephone support is available to answer any questions that may arise on a day to day basis in the use of the software, simply by calling our toll free number.

Real time support of users is handled through screen “shadowing”, allowing active demonstration of software procedures while district user looks on.

UFARS Training, Support, Editing and Reporting

The UFARS (Uniform Financial Accounting and Reporting Standards) account code structure is complex and constantly changing. The current Chapter X UFARS account code grid is updated and modifies the allowable account code structure in SMART Finance to assist the user in making the correct account code selection.

Region I staff conducts an annual training session to update district staff as to what account code changes have occurred and how to handle the changes.

Districts are provided an easy to read manual, highlighting the UFARS account code changes, as a reference tool.

Region I telephone support staff is available to field any UFARS questions that may arise in your district.

At the end of the fiscal year, we will run any number of edits on your district's data and account structure, work with you to clean up any UFARS errors and submit your UFARS data to the DCFL.

Audit Assistance

Region I conducts annual training sessions with most audit firms to ensure that the audit staff members understand changes that have occurred in financial reporting for school districts.

Our operating environment allows audit firms to directly access a district’s database in order to conduct audit work off-site, thereby reducing the time spent at the district during an audit and theoretically reducing or holding down audit fee increases.

Prior to the final submission of your district financial data to the DCFL, Region I will review your data, using a specific, detailed Y/E checklist for any unusual items or improper coding, which could negatively impact the district's revenue.

Now that we have FY16 swept under the rug, it’s time to turn our attention to UFARS changes and corrections needed for FY17. We are currently in the process of running UFARS Chapter X edits for all ...